In the kingdom of the Lion-tailed Macaque

In Valparai the endangered Lion-tailed Macaque inhabits tracts of dense evergreen forest hemmed in by tea plantations. It lives, literally and alarmingly, on the edge

We were driving down from Valparai along one of the remaining patches of tropical evergreen rainforests, soaking up their sounds and feel. We'd had a very good weekend trip, despite not getting to sight anything special besides a couple of Nilgiri Tahr on our way up. The road leading up to Valparai cuts through critical habitat of the Lion-Tailed Macaque and Great Hornbill. We had seen boards screaming "Lion Tailed Macaque are active here. Please drive carefully" and were discussing Kalyan Varma's roadkill photo that had been etched into our minds. 


Ladder-like bridges between canopy trees had been fashioned to ensure that the arboreal primates move freely without having to get down on the road. The extensive clearing of rainforests in Valparai had been started by the British administrators and kept up zealously by their Indian sucessors. Many of those areas are privately owned tea estates now. What remains of rainforests are islets, isolated but protected fiercely by the Nature Conservation Foundation. 


We stopped at a bend on sighting a female scarlet minivet sallying to catch insects. As we were about to get back in the car, Swaheel spotted a primate standing on a near horizontal tree branch, at eye level, about 15 metres away from the road above the downhill slope. "LTM," someone whispered. The animal stared at us for a second or two and walked unhurriedly into the canopy. We thought that was all, happy for the sighting but then we heard movement. Treetops were swinging and black forms moved in and out of branches. And there materialized LTMs of all sizes, and suddenly the forest came alive with whoops and squeaks. We were in the middle of a huge troop of monkeys. They moved down the road. We parked and followed them, careful not to step off the road.

We reached another clearing and were waiting for the monkeys to emerge from the canopy when suddenly Swaheel hissed in my ear: “There, there!" I looked and saw nothing – the canopy was thick with little light penetrating it. He pointed closer and I saw a huge male on all fours on a broken branch. A finger of light illuminated his white mane. Soon, there were macaques everywhere. They were of all ages and sizes -- babies clinging to mothers, juveniles, large males. I spotted another individual barely 3-4 meters from the ground and we spent a satisfying photographic moment.   Vehicles passed us. We had prior warning from Bijoy who had told us the area was very disturbed and we should refrain from attracting a crowd under any circumstances. So, every time we heard a vehicle approach, we pretended to be taking a leak! 


The monkey on the branch was reasonably well camouflaged. We left him alone. Others were trying to cross a gap between trees. What followed was an amazing display. The LTMs on this side of the gorge climbed to the tip of the outcropping branch one at a time. They would shake the branch to make it sway to provide ample thrust for launch. Then the monkey would leap, sailing through the air and latching onto branches on the other side.


They did this one by one -- the first one missed the branch on the other side, and we could hear a crash as it got a foothold further down. Each one of the others made the jump smoothly, including the last one – a mother with a clinging baby.


At this point a minibus from Chalakudy arrived, blaring music, and stopped to partake of the scene. Its occupants pointed at the LTMs and shouted despite our pleas for silence. That was enough irritation for the monkeys, which retreated further into the forest. 


We drove for another 300 meters from that point when we came to a clearing -- and the very verge of the dense evergreen forest. We were in a tea plantation, and it gave us the impression that these threatened primates were living, literally, on the edge. LTMs seldom cross through these plantations, which means they are boxed into these last stretches of evergreen forest with no way out, hoping that whatever little habitat they have would not run out of space, shelter and food.


Text and photos: Sandeep Somasekharan

Meeting Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the rainforest

The two faces of a forest stream are so unlike each other


Encounter 1: Flamboyance

The cab driver drops us at the end of a muddy road and says he'll wait till we return. The rains have let up a bit and a few drops that cling to leaves is the only precipitation. The path winds uphill first and then starts to descend. Can't stop, leeches are climbing up our legs from every direction. Can't run - you need to be sure of where you are treading. 


Soon the sound gives it away -- a stream rushing through the rainforest. A fallen tree on the way forces us to take another path, winding down, careful not to step on leaf litter. No one knows what lies beneath the dried and decomposing leaves.


Glimpses of white shine through the leaves. The sound is loud now -- a low, continuous roar. We find a a rock jutting above the stream and step on it, then exclaim in unison: "Wow!" 

Winding through the canopy the stream flows right before us. It dives under the rock on which we stand and swivels over to stabler terrain to the right of us. It is not just the rushing roar we can hear now. There is whistling, hissing, gushing, rustling... along with a dozen other sounds that I can't put to words. Also the rushing water works up a wind. Leeches still clamber up my shins, and I drag, roll and flick them into the water as I set up the tripod.

Not sure what but something (other than the leeches) makes you feel vulnerable standing next to such a forest stream. There is this urge to finish stuff fast and move on. Am I worried about a flash flood? Scenes run in my head in fast forward - Arwen on horseback, mumbling mystic words that unleash water on the wraiths trying to cross the placid river: water that races down on them in the shape of a dozen horses and wash them away. 


When Bijoy says "Let's go" I find myself eager to comply. Climbing uphill, though the route was steep, doesn't feel tough at all - what more inspiration is needed than seeing leeches inching their way up your legs when you keep them still for a moment?

Encounter 2: Tranquility 
We walk past the cottage reserved for Romulus Whittaker and, at the edge of the forest, there is an electric fence (which was not electrified). We climb it and take a few steps downwards into the foliage. And we realize that we have just been transported into another dimension. Pandora, maybe?
The diffused sunlight that enveloped the open grassland in front of the cottages is absent here, cut off by the canopy that makes us feel we are inside a tunnel. An occasional croak is heard, succeeded by soft mumbling whispers as the running water gossips with the rocks. 


Everything sports some shade of green. The water, the leaves and the canopy... 


The interns at ARRS said the place throngs with life at night, but unfortunately they never went on a night-walk that side during our stay, so we couldn't accompany them...

These were two natural streams, both flowing right through the same rainforest. Perhaps both would merge somewhere, or one may get consumed by the other. But when we met them, they sported entirely contradicting personae - as different as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.


Text and photos by Sandeep Somasekharan
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Encounter: Malabar Pit Viper

Little did we know that we were being watched by a silent and mysterious presence on a wooden beam behind us

The first time I went to Agumbe Rainforest Research Station, I remember walking for hours in the night, hoping to catch a glimpse of Malabar Pit Vipers. No luck. This time, on a trip with the other ogres, nearly two full days passed without incident.

The heat-sensing pits between the eye and nostril can be clearly seen

On the second night, Sandy and I were walking towards our tent in pouring rain, guided only by the small beam of my torch. I almost stepped on a twig that lay across my path -- a dry twig that appeared to be mottled with pale lichen growth in bluish green and brown. Except this twig was moving! 

"Stop!" I shrieked. Sandy bumped into me from behind. I guided the torch beam towards the head of the "twig". One good look at the snake's triangular head was enough to conclude that it was a viper. That, in addition to the colour pattern, pointed us in the right direction. This was a Malabar Pit Viper (Trimeresurus malabaricus)!

As I watched the fella slither past me slowly, I asked Sandy to go and fetch the others. As he ran back, I stood there in pouring rain and pitch darkness observing the snake cross the path and slowly enter a dense thicket. At times, when a twig or branch was too high, the snake lifted itself upwards like a straight stick and hooked its head on the twig. Then, it pulled itself up. This behaviour pointed to the snake's tree-dwelling lifestyle. 

By the time Sandy came back with Beej, the viper had almost dissolved into the shrub, aided by perfect camouflage. I was upset that the others had not had a good look at the snake.

The brown markings on green can be seen

Malabar Pit Vipers are nocturnal and are generally found in low bushes, trees and on rocks. During the day they are inactive and may be seen basking. They are endemic to the Western Ghats and are found between altitudes of 600 to 2134 metres. Adult snakes can grow to 55-79 centimeters. The longest ever measured was 105 centimeters. The triangular head is broader than the neck. They are typically green but appear in other morphs and a lot of variations have been recorded, including reddish-brown, yellow, etc. On its back the snake is olive or brown with black or brown spots, which may be joined to form a zigzag pattern. The sides have faint yellow spotting and the tail has yellow and black markings. The pupils have vertical slits. Malabar Pit Vipers are ovoiviviparous -- the eggs form, develop and hatch within the mother's body.

Pit vipers, which are classified under the subfamily Crotalinae in the family Viperidae, are distinguished from other vipers by the presence of a pair of heat-sensing pits located between the eye and nostril. These organs help the snake detect the body heat of warm-blooded prey even in absolute darkness.

The other ogres were disappointed at missing the snake the night before but at 4 pm the next day, our luck turned. The ogres were busy treating a Vine Snake like a supermodel. After about 20 minutes all except me and Andy left the scene. After lingering for another ten minutes, we decided to go back to the room to pack and freshen up before our return journey. Just as we left Prashanth, the station manager, called out to us. He pointed to a wooden beam just under the roof of the dining area and said, "Look who's sitting here." There lay a Malabar Pit Viper, coiled, calm and relaxed.

Relaxed and lazing

Observing from high above

It dawned on us that all the while, as we were photographing the Vine Snake, this chap was watching the drama from its high throne!

The others arrived and we took good, long looks at the snake. Malabar Pit Vipers have prehensile tails (adapted to grasp or hold) and this perhaps helps them to anchor themselves on branches or twigs while they lunge at their prey. Here, the snake had used its tail as a kind of hinge to loop it against the beam in the absence of anything else to hold on to. 

We made sure to keep our distance as vipers, though slow, are known to be capable of extremely fast strikes. The venom is mildly haemotoxic -- the toxins destroy red blood cells, disrupt clotting of blood, and causes tissue damage. In humans it results in pain and swelling. 

The prehensile tail is used as a hinge in the absence of anything to hold onto

I'm sure the snake wouldn't have wanted to waste its venom on us, and instead save it for the geckos, tree-frogs, shrews, and birds which make up a large part of its diet. Pit vipers have erectile fangs which are kept folded against the roof of the mouth. They are brought into place only when striking.

After we observed and photographed the snake, I asked Prashanth if he would move the snake since it was close to the dining area. To my surprise, he said they would leave it there and let it decide its own way out at night. Though I was a little concerned about slithering vipers that might end up over our heads or under the dining table, I was also glad that ARRS offered a haven for snakes where they had right of way.

Text: Arun

Photographs: Sahastrarashmi and Arun

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Encounter: Monster Leeches

Pardon me for exaggerating the danger posed by leeches, for experience has not been kind to me


The farmer looked at his buffalo lying in the leaf litter. She looked as if she had been sucked dry, with circular bite-marks the diameter of tennis balls. He gasped. Having spent all sixty three years of his life here, he knew the forest and the grasslands adjoining it like the back of his hand. There was absolutely no creature here that could inflict such a death. He had previously lost a few cattle to snake-bite, and a calf to a leopard. But, this was certainly odd. 


A slight movement among the fallen leaves caught his eye. A bullfrog? But something made him look at it again. It didn't have a head, just a stump in place. It tilted the stump-head left and right like a blind man trying to tell the direction of a sound. And it leaped right at him - the same way frogs do, albeit in the opposite direction.


As he battled with the thing, trying to pull out the stump that worked now like a suction-head attached firmly to his throat, he saw from the corners of his eyes, more of these creatures springing towards him from all directions. He screamed, though he knew well that there was no one around who could hear him...

A few miles away, in a secret army biological research station, the army chief read the report from his scientists. The last three decrypted reports had brought a smile to his face...

"Experiment to infuse tiger leech DNA into bullfrog spawn- Success

Self sustainability in the wild - Success

Reproducing capability - Success"

But the blood drained from his face as he read the last report....

CODE RED! Recapturing/ eliminating the specimen released to wild - Failure. Transmitters attached to six of the twenty not working.

If the Japanese could invent Godzilla out of their resentment for nuclear experiments and atom bombs, can't I invent a monster-leech?!

A drunk leech with a punctured stomach paints a gory picture (Photo: Sahastra)

Since childhood, I have been mortally afraid of leeches, though I had not yet encountered them. My dad was an avid trekker and came back from his trips with tales of how leeches attached themselves to the limbs of trekkers and grew fat sucking blood. He said that dropping salt or lemon juice over them made them drop off. The stories implanted a permanent apprehension in my head about leeches. Add to that other stories I heard of leeches getting under the eyelid of someone who washed his face in a stream only to be discovered two days later when the eye swelled up, of HIV viruses being found inside leeches in Africa, and of a guy who went to change his undies in the bushes after a long dip in a forest stream finding a fat, bloated leech mirroring his leech-like member... 

How much more does one need for mere fear to give way to paranoia?

The modus operandi of this bloodsucker is the proven lie-in-wait-and-ambush method. The moment you put your feet anywhere near one of them, they will detect motion and heat and latch onto you. They clamber up through gaps in your shoe, all the way up to where your socks end, and latch onto the skin. Its saliva contains an anaesthetic, which numbs pain and other sensation, and an anti-coagulant, which unclots the blood to make it flow smoothly. When it has had enough, it drops off.

The fat, dark specimen looks for a tender spot on Beej's index finger...

On our Agumbe trip we saw two kinds of leeches: a thin, long one with stripes around it and two along its length, and a darker, shorter one with two cream-coloured stripes on either side along its length. With the first one, the standard technique that Arun taught us worked well: Roll, pick and flick. Put a finger on top of it, and roll it over the leech. It would curl up into a ball, then just pick it up and flick it far with a finger. With the latter, this was tough as the guy just wouldn't roll. Here, pressing your nail near the bite to loosen its hold and then doing a carrom-strike with the middle finger was easier.

Two slender leeches attempt to find the point where the socks originate...

We also tried some experiments with the guy. Beej lifted one up, pulled it with both hands like a rubber band, twisted it and squeezed it in an attempt to "give him a tough time" - but the guy was literally indestructible that way. Chemical warfare was easier. Some salt on a leech would make it shrivel up and die, and same happened when we squeezed a drop of lemon juice on it. I had worn socks dipped in Dettol and brine and dried, but they didn't deter the leeches much. Wearing ankle-length shoes and jeans that extended all the way to the base of the shoe, made the leeches climb up the jeans - they were easier to spot and remove.

Locals often tell us to drop salt or hold a flame to a biting leech. But it is said that this may cause the leech to regurgitate blood along with bacteria in its stomach right on the bite wound, leading to the risk of infection.

One had latched on to my leg too (photo: Beej)

After the Agumbe trip, I made my peace with the leeches. Of course, peace is a relative term, though I even stood still with a leech having started to suck my blood long enough to let Beej photograph it. But there were moments when they troubled me -- like when one attached itself to Arun's arm at 1 AM when we were asleep inside the tent. And yes, the itch from only three bites (a blessing, considering the number that I plucked off my legs and one from right under my chin) hasn't worn off yet.

Text by Sandeep Somasekharan

Photos by Sahastrarashmi, Beej and Sandeep

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Encounter: Whining for a Vine Snake

For three days we roamed Agumbe despairing that no snake had slithered across our path. And then we had a stroke of Last Day's Luck!

We saw them all at Agumbe - frogs, lizards, insects, birds... even a mammal. But other than a close encounter that Sandy and I one night, the three other Ogres whined for the slithering kind, especially Green Vine Snakes (Ahaetulla nasuta), which are generally quite common in the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS) campus.

After three dry days (not at all in the literal sense) we had a stroke of so-called Last Day's Luck. The four of us, except Sahastra, were exploring a far corner of the campus when we heard him call out to us. He met us half-way and exclaimed, "Vine Snake!" I don't think I have run faster in my life. I stopped only when Sahastra motioned me to, as we were close to the dry shrub in which the snake was stretched out.

The contrast a Vine snake brings to its background is impressive

The next twenty minutes were spent photographing and admiring the snake. We made sure not to agitate the snake by keeping our distance, not because we feared it but because we wanted the snake to be as comfortable and relaxed as it was. 

Although an agitated vine snake looks impressive -- it inflates and flattens its neck and throat, revealing a black-and-white checkered pattern -- we made sure we did not do that. Such pictures of the vine snake (with chessboard markings and mouth open) are most common in photographic forums, indicating that the snakes were threatened or stressed by the photographers in search of an impressive picture. I implore readers, and photographers among them, to exercise restraint while photographing these snakes.

Green Vine Snakes are slender arboreal snakes that can grow up to 1.5 metres on average. The green colouration is due to the interaction of a yellow pigment on the snake's blue skin. The longest specimen ever measured was a female, which was 1.94 metres. The snake has a long, triangular, pointed snout. The eyes are slightly forward-facing with pupils that are horizontal slits.

The pointed snout and horizontal slits of the pupils are characteristic

These snakes are found in forested habitats, including gardens, up to an elevation of 1,800 m. A diurnal predator, it generally waits and ambushes its prey, which include frogs, birds, tadpoles, lizards, small mammals and other snakes. Green Vine Snakes are rear-fanged and mildly venomous. Human victims may suffer local swelling, numbness or itching.

Coils

The forward-facing eyes, which enable binocular vision, help the snake judge depth and distance, which are necessary to sustain its arboreal lifestyle. The snake's eyes and pointed snout have also led to myths that it plucks out the eyes of its adversaries. Curiously, J C Daniel has recorded that the Vine Snake has the "habit of striking the eye of its opponent, the only object in movement in a tree snake's view" and adds that the snake's common name in Tamil means "eye-pecking snake".

The forward-facing eyes help the snake judge depth and distance

The Green Vine Snake is generally quite aggressive and does not take well to being handled. But it's not difficult to figure if the snake is feeling threatened and wants to be left alone - all you need to look for are those chessboard markings. 

Vine Snakes snakes are ovoviviparous -- they produce eggs that develop within the mother's body. The female gives birth to live young, which have no placental connection with the mother. A vine snake may have between 3-23 young at a time.

After being treated like a model for around 20 minutes, the patient snake decided to move on, deciding to end its encounter with the ogres. But I'm sure that the snake and the ogres were happy that they treated each other with respect and none were left whining.

Text and photos by Arun Menon

Lead photo by Sahastrarashmi 
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Encounter: Bicoloured Frog

It's tiny and blends in completely with the leaf litter but once you spot it, the Bicoloured Frog is unmistakable

The southwest monsoon has just set in and the entire forest is dripping wet. The dimly lit floor is an abstract mosaic of rust, maroon, brown, beige, green and black – leaves in all stages of decomposition, slowly turning into soggy mulch. An occasional vein of green moss on a tree buttress glows iridescent under a rare shaft of sunlight. Fungi sprout everywhere feasting on death and decay. Every tentative footstep encounters leeches – tiny cold-blooded filaments swaying in the stagnant and humid air, relentlessly in the hunt for the iota of warmth that our feet radiate, setting them off on a determined somersaulting advance. Rotting twigs and branches give way at the slightest footfall and the soft murmur of rain on the dense closed canopy is a permanent hum in a forest which is otherwise silent, at least until nightfall provides the cue to lovesick frogs and crickets.

We are on the lookout for the Hump-nosed Pit Viper but instead we sight the Bicoloured Frog. It, too, is wet and soaked, motionless until it notices us with its large, round, red eyes, which are well adapted to sight in the semi-darkness of the rainforest. 


True to its name, the predominant impression of the Bicoloured Frog (Clinotarsus curtipes), is the neat division of the colouration of the upper and the lower halves of its body. The upper half (which has been described as grey or brown) is cream-coloured, tinged with yellow resulting in a very light shade of brown that matches the surrounding leaf litter. The lower half of the body is glistening black with no banding on the limbs. Seen in dimmer light the glistening back gives the impression of deep beige. 


The nostrils are very close to the mouth and the tympanum, present on the black half of the body and hence not very easily seen, is as large as the eye. The size is approximately 7 cm and the snout is pointed. The backs of all the four or five frogs that we encountered bore randomly distributed black spots, providing excellent camouflage in the leaf litter. The spotting on the back may or may not be present on individual frogs though all the frogs that we encountered had them.

While we photographed the frog – almost lying on the ground for an eye-level view (an act of extreme gallantry considering the omnipresent, ever-flipping thirsty-for-blood leeches) the frog was moderately alarmed and tried to move away, on one occasion walking up using its limbs, but was not unduly shy, never taking more than one hop. Clinotarsus curtipes seemed to be fairly common but none happened to be in breeding colors yet.

The IUCN status is Near Threatened, primarily on account of habitat loss. Clinotarsus curtipes is a terrestrial leaf-litter frog but has webbed toes and enters the water only during the breeding season. It adapts well and is found in different forest types -- evergreen, semi-evergreen and deciduous. In the breeding season the frog acquires a ruddy disposition with the black receding out from the sides and the underside becoming very dark, almost black. The vocal sac is internal. As in a lot of frog species the female is larger than the male. J C Daniel notes that the dispersal of young frogs is very orderly and almost battalion-like. 

The spots, like the stripes of the tiger, can be distinctive and are used to identify individual frogs during density surveys. The spots are also a good aid to locate the frog since an uncannily well synchronised set of polka dots hopping on the forest floor give away an otherwise excellent camouflage.

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Text and photographs by Sahastrarashmi 
Photograph of the breeding male by L Shyamal (Wikipedia Commons)

The Green Ogre Weekly Update July 3

What you missed while you were slaving away at the office

If your office blocks the beautiful Internet that lies outside of your work network, and if you're not too savvy about the whole proxy thing, you've probably missed out on an entire week's worth of The Green Ogre. Fret not, help is at hand. This weekly summary will bring you up to speed.

Our amazing Agumbe Diaries have revealed some lovely experiences from the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station, where we held the first Green Ogre Monsoon Conclave in June. Here's a summary of the week's best:

The Blue-eyed Bush Frog (Philautus neelanethrus) was unknown to science till 2007 when it was reported from the Sharavathi Valley. Out on a post-dinner amble at the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station, we were introduced to this intriguing but shy amphibian. It turned out that it was really the prince of frogs, and immensely kissable.

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What's a rainforest without rain? Chicken Biriyani without chicken? Spending three full days in pouring rain didn't dampen our enthusiasm for it as we expected. In fact, when we came away we were Noahs after the flood, irked by anyone who complained about rain.

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Ancient Greek poets compared cicadas to dulcet-voiced queens. But erm, only male cicadas sing. And they do mostly by day. So what was this one, which we met in Dandeli, doing out by himself so late at night? Curiouser and curiouser...

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Yak, yak, yak! Sometimes it's important to shut up and let a photograph do the talking. And that's what we did on Wednesday. But hey, doesn't this picture inspire more conversation? Do slugs eat orchids? And what was the butterfly doing there? What kind of relationships do they share? So much for silence. Go on and leave a comment...

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The most fascinating discoveries in a rainforest are often not the large animals but the tiny, elusive ones. If it weren't for Andy, we would have passed up this extraordinarily beautiful Malaysian Moon Moth. Interestingly, all this moth ever does in its adult life is sleep and make love. Now, we know a great many people who'd envy that – imagine just having to live on love and fresh air!

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Birds in a rainforest are not easy to come by. You hear them all the time but the dense canopy and tangled understory keep them away from view. And so it was by sheer luck that we stepped into a forest glade when the rain took a break, and were treated to an amazing aerial acrobatic display by a Racket-tailed Drongo.

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Look out for more good stuff next week!

Wordless Wednesday: The Orchid, the Slug and the Skipper

Photo: Sahastrarashmi

It's raining in the rainforest!

After a long, wet, leech-infested weekend in the rainforest, you return like Noah after the flood, intolerant of anyone complaining about rain

It doesn't rain in the rainforest, it pours!

Alighting at Agumbe bus stand on the first day of our planned three-day expedition, what met our eyes was a thick layer of mist that shrouded the sleepy town. Wherever you looked, all you saw was mist. The reaction from the photographer within me, seeing the bleakness around, was not dissimilar to that of the penguins in Madagascar alighting at Antarctica and regarding the emptiness around them: "Well, this sucks!" It looked pretty certain that the entire trip was going to be what we shutterbugs call a "High-ISO" trip - cranking up the sensitivity of our camera sensors to get sharp shots in low light (and invariably ending up with noisy images).

 Arecanut trees stand guard in the mist like ghostly soldiers

But then, a little introspection made me open up (as well as brighten up) a little. I have never been in a rainforest in such pristine condition. It was bound to be dripping wet, slushy and depressing but I would never get to see such rain anywhere - Agumbe is the rainiest place in south India and just trails Cherrapunji and Mawsynram with respect to the volume of rain that it receives. So I let the apprehensions drop and walked into the mist and set my first foot on the leech-infested road bordering the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station. The vertical embankments on either side of the cut-out mud road sprouted moss and ferns. Even trees had moss all over their trunks.

The whole place just throngs with life

The sky was almost permanently cloudy. Not a single ray of sun shone through. Rain and mist took turns to mate with the landscape. And it was green all around - olive-green, dark green, bright-green, bottle green, emerald green and dung green. The ground looked like it was saturated from beneath and was sweating at the surface, even when it did not rain. Sunlight probably never got to kiss the floor in these parts. There was leaf litter from the trees in various stages of decomposition all around, and we took care not to step on it -- as curled up in there might be foul-tempered Hump-nosed Pit Vipers (Hypnale hypnale), or (worse?) leeches.

The amount of moisture around is incredible...

Siddharth Rao, the director of ARRS, warned us on the dos and don'ts before we started our stroll. "And yes," he added, "Watch out for falling trees."

Andy was curious. "What kind?" 

Siddharth replied, "Every kind..."

And we saw quite a few of them had fallen. It looked like the excess of water and moisture everywhere had infiltrated through the bark and into the kernel of the wood, softening it from within, making it rot and snap at the touch of the gentlest of winds.

Despite falling, life still manages to cling on...

After the first day, when we waited for breaks in the rain, we just accepted them as a part of the package. We strolled around, drizzle notwithstanding, just ensuring that our cameras weren't soaked. When it rained, there was running water everywhere. Tiny streams flowed along the paths and would get isolated into puddles when the rains paused. Large drops of water would bomb down still, from the thick canopy above, many minutes past the showers. Drops of water clung to everything - spiderwebs, leaves, fruits, branches and insects.  

Wild berries dripping with fresh raindrops

Incredibly, despite all the rain, it was not cold, just moist. You could reach out and grab moisture from the air. Winds were gentle, just the kind that would rustle leaves and ruffle your hair.

Every strand of  this spiderweb was threaded with pearly water-drops

The nights were even more amazing. All kinds of croaks -- loud, shrill, ringing, hollow -- resounded as frogs called out to each other, the sounds echoing off the membrane walls of the bubbles under their chins.

A white nosed bush frog suddenly finds itself in the spotlight...

A silly jingle that I made up for myself "It's raining in the rainforest" looped in my head all through the trip. And once outside the forest and back in Mysore, I was irked at people making the slightest crib about a drizzle. I was Noah after the flood... 

One hundred percent attendance at the first Green Ogre Monsoon Conclave. L-R: Beej, Sahastra, Sandy, Andy and Arun

Watch out for more Agumbe Diaries!
Text and photos by Sandeep Somasekharan. All rights reserved.